Pulsed helium3 fusion in a magnetic bottle, not lasers or same old tokawhatever...

KD5ZXG

Gawd
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Not the latest from Helion, but maybe the techiest. My search here finds no earlier mentions of it.
Strangely, no steam turbine needed. Confinement field returns electricity to a basement full of caps.


Why must narrators all have annoying accents?
 
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I was listening with one ear, but if I understand correctly, the energy is in the form of back-EMF after the squeeze happens.

I saw that "bottle" design a while ago either in another project or maybe it was the same one.

National Ignition facility had that breakthrough around Christmas, where they managed to obtain more energy from the fusion than was delivered via laser.
I guess it's a pretty huge deal, if not for the losses incurred to actually operate the lasers and associated devices. We still need way better lasers in order to go to that route.
 
Oh and in 2021 there was that new superconducting magnet at MIT that obtained 20 Teslas. A MRI machine is like 2 T.
I can make like 0.5 T at home, but for just a milisecond :<
 
Fusing helium-3 has long been known to produce directly harvestable electricity (about 70% of the energy generated if I recall correctly). The problem with helium-3 is that it is extremely rare on earth. The only reliable sources of helium-3 are fusion of hydrogen into tritium, and letting it decay to helium-3, sticking lithium into fission reactors and splitting it into tritium, or mining it from the moon. Tritium is also a byproduct of normal fission but in very low quantities. All natural sources on earth are so rare that extracting it would consume more power than it could produce.

Helium-3 reactors are nice but have the huge problem of fuel source to solve. Maybe they'll be viable on planes due to lower cooling requirements and more power produced directly as electricity. I don't see them replacing the need to develop standard hydrogen fusion reactors.

Edit to add additional sources of tritium.
 
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Fusing helium-3 has long been known to produce directly harvestable electricity (about 70% of the energy generated if I recall correctly). The problem with helium-3 is that it is extremely rare on earth. The only reliable sources of helium-3 are fusion of hydrogen into tritium, and letting it decay to helium-3, sticking lithium into fission reactors and splitting it into tritium, or mining it from the moon. Tritium is also a byproduct of normal fission but in very low quantities. All natural sources on earth are so rare that extracting it would consume more power than it could produce.

Helium-3 reactors are nice but have the huge problem of fuel source to solve. Maybe they'll be viable on planes due to lower cooling requirements and more power produced directly as electricity. I don't see them replacing the need to develop standard hydrogen fusion reactors.

Edit to add additional sources of tritium.
If you watch the video, you would know they are making their own helium-3 by fusing deuterium + deuterium.
 
If you watch the video, you would know they are making their own helium-3 by fusing deuterium + deuterium.


So you're still fusing hydrogen to generate helium-3. Deuterium is also a limited resource, so sooner or later will you need to switch to fusing regular hydrogen to generate helium-3.
 
Oh and in 2021 there was that new superconducting magnet at MIT that obtained 20 Teslas. A MRI machine is like 2 T.
I can make like 0.5 T at home, but for just a milisecond :<

20 T superconducting magnets have been around for quite a while, but what makes the MIT magnet remarkable is the fact that they can keep it superconducting at much higher temperatures than conventional superconducting magnets. They can keep it superconducting at 20 degrees K, which is a major step up from most superconductors needing closer to absolute zero.

Their magnet, though, is 10 tons of material...

My 850 MHz nuclear magnetic resonance magnet is superconducting, and puts out 20 T, but requires sub-cooled helium (2.2 K instead of 4.2 K) to keep superconducting, or else you get a nasty, massive quench...

I eagerly await the day that someone can make a smaller superconducting magnet that can remain superconducting at liquid nitrogen temperatures, since helium is getting horrendously expensive these days. :(
 
nerdshed.jpg
 
I suspect from plentiful Deuterium, they intend to breed and sell Tritium and He3 if not electricity. Problem with fusing Deuterium to Deuterium is the dirty neutron it throws and the Tritium it often makes. If you fuse Deuterium to He3 which is clean, you also sometimes fuse Deuterium to Deuterium and Deuterium to Tritium which are dirty. Fusing He3 to He3 in the absence of Deuterium is supposedly very clean, but harder to initiate and slightly less rewarding. They mention separating centralized manufacture of He3 from sites of electric generation to minimize neutron contamination, but right now separation is not on the menu.
 
So we need more heavy water reactors to make tritium. Problem solved, right?

I did run into this one a while ago. It seems legit, but not without it's problems. From what I remember, I read that it isn't yet reliable in it's fusion events. Quite the opposite actually....but hopefully scaling it up will alleviate this problem.

Many ideas on the table of how to do fusion. It'll be interesting to see what pans out ...if we're not all dead by then.
 
Definitely is an interesting aspect, although it mentioned 18.3MeV from the D-He3 fusion, but I don't think all of that is the kinetic energy of the daughter particles that form (H-He4) there may be some high energy photons that come from it too although it's been a hot moment since I've really looked at fusion diagrams. Seems neat to use the magnetic field from the charged particles pushing back on the magnetic field to actually create energy, that's not something I would have thought of. I am curious though if they going to use conducting coils to actually create the electricity (with their 7th gen reactor), what's to stop those coils from siphoning off energy from the magnetic field when they pulse the magnetic fields to create the fusion in the first place?
 
20 T superconducting magnets have been around for quite a while, but what makes the MIT magnet remarkable is the fact that they can keep it superconducting at much higher temperatures than conventional superconducting magnets. They can keep it superconducting at 20 degrees K, which is a major step up from most superconductors needing closer to absolute zero.

Their magnet, though, is 10 tons of material...

My 850 MHz nuclear magnetic resonance magnet is superconducting, and puts out 20 T, but requires sub-cooled helium (2.2 K instead of 4.2 K) to keep superconducting, or else you get a nasty, massive quench...

I eagerly await the day that someone can make a smaller superconducting magnet that can remain superconducting at liquid nitrogen temperatures, since helium is getting horrendously expensive these days. :(
I'm sorry, I did learn more from your post, it's an eye-opener, but I need to ask.
Is that a medical device? Can one get inside that 20T magnet, have you tried to, and what would happen/happened (assuming no metals implanted)?
 
Deuterium, for all reasonable intents and purposes (until fusion plants are located every few blocks like Edison DC power plants in late 19th century Manhattan), is essentially unlimited. Tritium is the scarce resource.

As a child, before I understood more about fusion, I though deuterium + deuterium should be the most sensible since He4 has the same four nucleons as two deuterium atoms and seemed more "even" than basic hydrogen fused with tritium. That assumption certainly proved wrong in both the energy requirements and the "occasional" byproduct of that extra neutron when He3 is made rather than He4. Then again, all we need are certain breeder reactors to get more tritium and some weapons grade fissile material as a fun additional extra in the same way that many copper mines tend to have a nice sideline in gold production that happens to accompany the copper.

EDIT: Separately, on a timescale not too disimilar from the ignition facility and with seemingly equally impressive destructive force, can't magnets get beyond 1,000 teslas if you are willing to blow them up?

SECOND EDIT: Aren't people not supposed to watch that movie anymore for some reason?
 
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As a child, before I understood more about fusion, I though deuterium + deuterium should be the most sensible since He4 has the same four nucleons as two deuterium atoms and seemed more "even" than basic hydrogen fused with tritium. That assumption certainly proved wrong in both the energy requirements and the "occasional" byproduct of that extra neutron when He3 is made rather than He4.
Too much energy in a He4 nucleus such that it breaks it apart and one of the daughter particles takes a way a lot of the energy either a proton in D + D --> T + p or a neutron in D + D --> He3 + n . While baryon conservation is conserved in D + D --> He4 you also need to conserve momentum and energy and the case of He4 just doesn't happen very often such that there's effectively a probability of 50/50 between T+p or He3+n as
 
I'm sorry, I did learn more from your post, it's an eye-opener, but I need to ask.
Is that a medical device? Can one get inside that 20T magnet, have you tried to, and what would happen/happened (assuming no metals implanted)?

Technically, not a medical device. The bore for holding the sample is 54 mm wide, and the sample tubes are 5 mm in diameter.

We're not looking that the whole image of a living (or dead) organism, but rather, looking at how the individual hydrogen atoms (along with other non-integer spin nuclei) resonate, which reveals structural information about the molecules in question. This is how we get structures of biomolecules, such as proteins, carbohydrates, DNA, lipids, etc., and the structures help us design drugs, etc.

It operates using the same technology as a MRI, but MRI's basically excite the water molecules in a living organism, and the resonance of the hydrogen atoms in the water is what paints the 3D picture for you.
 
Fusion is never gonna happen. Even if we did, the cost of getting electricity through it wouldn't be cost effective. The video doesn't even show it capturing energy, but explains how they could. The problem with fusion is that everyone either generates equal amount of energy that they put into the system, or just slightly more than they put in, but nobody has actually captured it and used it to generate electricity. Fusion is always 20 years away for a reason.
 
Fusion is never gonna happen.
...

Even if we did, the cost of getting electricity through it wouldn't be cost effective.
And you know this how? As you state they don't even capture energy so how can you know how much it will end up costing? Also you can argue other ways of making electricity aren't cost effective, otherwise why isn't every power plant a coal plant? That's the cheapest way to do it, sometimes there are other reasons for doing something that cost more (which again we don't even know what expense it will be).

The video doesn't even show it capturing energy, but explains how they could.
Correct, the video shows a different (less known) way of making fusion, that's all it was meant to show. The video isn't "look we have a fusion power plant up and running".

The problem with fusion is that everyone either generates equal amount of energy that they put into the system, or just slightly more than they put in, but nobody has actually captured it and used it to generate electricity. Fusion is always 20 years away for a reason.
And back to your first point, it is never going to happen... yet explain the problems it has when it happens.
Bottom line is this is a process known as the scientific method, you have an idea, you find a way to build a way to test your idea, if your idea shows to fail you go back to refine your idea or refine the way to test your idea, if your idea is shown to be true (or work) then that leads to other ideas, which require further testing, etc etc. Real life doesn't work like a video game where you click on a research and it tells you exactly how long it will take to complete. The reality is science is boring as fuck for everyone who's not doing it, "normies" want to see results they don't care about all the shit in between.

And yeah it's 20 years away... just like Elon Musk's next thing is 2 years away, i.e. it's a running joke that's often used by writers and no one should take it seriously.
 

Bruker is always pushing the edge. 13 years ago, I was in Karlsruhe touring their facility, and their magnet production area was something truly special, combining absolute cutting edge technology (the wires used to make the superconducting coils) with good ol' fashioned hand-manufacturing of the said coils.

Those hybrid magnets, combining low temp and high temp superconductors have really opened up a new possibility for magnetic fields of all strengths, and I look forward to the day that someone can scale them down for the lower fields.

I love my Ascend 850 magnet, but the fact that it has to constantly pump 4.2 K liquid helium through a needle valve to get it down to 2.2 K really consumes a lot more helium than non-pumped magnet. The hybrid technology is going to be the next standard, I hope, especially since the cost of liquid helium has gone through the roof...


Edit: those 1.0+ GHz magnets are also actively refrigerated, so you only have to do a helium fill about once a year or so. Of course, they cost 2-3x as much as a non-refrigerated magnet...
 
Ran a research center with Bruker XRD and XRF instruments. Nothing like German Engineering and high price. All of our NMRs at UT Austin were Bruker(600 MHz) or Varian.
 
Ran a research center with Bruker XRD and XRF instruments. Nothing like German Engineering and high price. All of our NMRs at UT Austin were Bruker(600 MHz) or Varian.

Sadly, after Agilent closed up shop in the world of NMR, Herr Laukien immediately rescinded most of the academic discounts, and jacked up the prices significantly, while also having his engineers do more with less.
 
Wow, those are some crazy devices.
I'd never have thought they reach those strengths. The prospect you linked to compares their stuff to 2009 models (feels recent) and it's not even close, 28.2 vs 23.5.
It's still quite abstract to me and I'd have trouble appreciating the opportunity this opens up, but being able to view proteins without messing them up sounds amazing.
I can definitely appreciate the sheer field strength, after seeing "mere" 2-4 T machines waving chairs and heavy tools around like toys.
So, I'm guessing the next breakthrough would involve finding a conductor that can be cooled with for example liquid Hydrogen?

 
Wow, those are some crazy devices.
I'd never have thought they reach those strengths. The prospect you linked to compares their stuff to 2009 models (feels recent) and it's not even close, 28.2 vs 23.5.
It's still quite abstract to me and I'd have trouble appreciating the opportunity this opens up, but being able to view proteins without messing them up sounds amazing.
I can definitely appreciate the sheer field strength, after seeing "mere" 2-4 T machines waving chairs and heavy tools around like toys.
So, I'm guessing the next breakthrough would involve finding a conductor that can be cooled with for example liquid Hydrogen?

They do have superconductors that could be cooled with liquid hydrogen, but those are mostly ceramics, which have virtually no ductile qualities. Trying to make a magnet coil out of them would be an absolute nightmare. There's one metallic compound out there, magnesium diboride, that is somewhat ductile and can superconduct at H2 temps, and is used in today's Tokamak designs.

If someone could find a superconductor that can stay superconducting at liquid N2 temperatures, then the helium crisis that's making my head pound on a daily basis would eventually be a non-issue for those of us in the field.
 
And you know this how? As you state they don't even capture energy so how can you know how much it will end up costing?
Currently nobody has produced any electricity from fusion. Zero, None, Zip. Most of the fusion is just creating more heat which is hard to extract because it's so hot it could literally melt the walls of the reactor the moment it touches it. Even going by the heat, they barely produce more energy than they put into the system, but as we all know when you convert energy from one form to another you inevitably loose energy in the process, which probably means no electrical energy will be produced.
Also you can argue other ways of making electricity aren't cost effective, otherwise why isn't every power plant a coal plant?
Pollution, which is the driving force to go fusion. Realistically natural gas is cheaper now to produce electricity.
That's the cheapest way to do it, sometimes there are other reasons for doing something that cost more (which again we don't even know what expense it will be).
Fusion will be expensive if IF we ever get it working. This isn't Back to the Future where we can take trash and put it in a Mr. Fusion to generate 1.21 gigawatts of electricity. This currently needs special expensive sources of fuel just to show they accomplished nothing.
And back to your first point, it is never going to happen... yet explain the problems it has when it happens.
Bottom line is this is a process known as the scientific method, you have an idea, you find a way to build a way to test your idea, if your idea shows to fail you go back to refine your idea or refine the way to test your idea, if your idea is shown to be true (or work) then that leads to other ideas, which require further testing, etc etc. Real life doesn't work like a video game where you click on a research and it tells you exactly how long it will take to complete. The reality is science is boring as fuck for everyone who's not doing it, "normies" want to see results they don't care about all the shit in between.
This is less scientific method and more profiteering. Lots of people in science will make promises that can't be realistically achieved because research money is really good. Nuclear fusion is possible in theory but the amount of energy required to maintain the reaction is drastically higher than the amount of energy produced by the reaction. Even still can you make a machine that extracts that energy? The way we do fusion is by making it hot, like really hot. So hot that nothing can realistically contain it, which is why magnets are used. So how do you extract energy from the reaction that won't destroy equipment and shut down the reaction? You can't. Even still, so far only a little extra energy has been produced compared to what's put in, and what's put in is generally electricity.
And yeah it's 20 years away... just like Elon Musk's next thing is 2 years away, i.e. it's a running joke that's often used by writers and no one should take it seriously.
We're no closer than we were 20 years ago. We can put that research money into extracting energy from that nuclear fusion reactor in the sky, but the neighbors don't want to see giant fan blades or solar panels on their roofs because property value. Also batteries but we have actual working solutions to all these problems.
 
Currently nobody has produced any electricity from fusion. Zero, None, Zip. Most of the fusion is just creating more heat which is hard to extract because it's so hot it could literally melt the walls of the reactor the moment it touches it. Even going by the heat, they barely produce more energy than they put into the system, but as we all know when you convert energy from one form to another you inevitably loose energy in the process, which probably means no electrical energy will be produced.

Indeed. The process of converting heat into electricity using current methods is relatively inefficient, that we're still using steam powered turbines. At best, someone's looking at a 35-40% efficiency. I don't know what the specs are on the newest thermophotovoltaic cells that can directly capture heat and turn it into electricity, but since they're not mainstream, I'm guessing there are still some efficiency issues there.

Generating more energy than what you put into a reaction is one thing. Converting it into something usable is an entirely different matter. Using current methods, someone would have to put out about 3 times as much energy as what was used to generate it, in order to get a net positive result in terms of usable electricity.
 
Fusion will never be a part of the electrical grid because:

1. As discussed, it's been very difficult to get more energy out than it takes to get to the fusion reaction, and even more difficult to capture that energy as electricity.

2. The funding sources that would have to be involved don't want cheap, abundant, nonpolluting energy to be available.
 
What concerns me are resistance and inductance from/to a basement of capacitors. Each requires more cable. Brief pulses want a solution on a short leash. Avoiding turbines should not mean throwing a flywheel out with the bathwater. Borrow a homopolar motor/generator or compulsator from railgun research. For 500 MegaJoule example:
 
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Indeed. The process of converting heat into electricity using current methods is relatively inefficient, that we're still using steam powered turbines. At best, someone's looking at a 35-40% efficiency. I don't know what the specs are on the newest thermophotovoltaic cells that can directly capture heat and turn it into electricity, but since they're not mainstream, I'm guessing there are still some efficiency issues there.
I'm not saying we shouldn't because it's inefficient but that whatever extra they produced will still be a negative result because you still need to convert to electricity. These feel good stories are all about the newtons of energy in the system, but the goal is to make electricity and they haven't gotten to that point. They made a bunch of heat and then compare that to the energy put in and claim a positive gain. It's the same as someone who goes by crank horsepower in a engine when you really should be going by the wheel horsepower of the engine. The sad truth is if they actually tried to generate electricity it would be a very pathetic amount compared to what they put in.

2. The funding sources that would have to be involved don't want cheap, abundant, nonpolluting energy to be available.
This is the main driving force behind fusion. Never mind that we could solve most of the worlds electricity demands with solar, wind turbines, hydro power, and batteries without much of any needs from a giant power making building. Getting solar in your home is so stupid right now, it hurts my head thinking about it. For one, a lot of solar panels generate AC straight from the panel itself. Remember what I said about converting energy from one type to another will result in some loss? This goes for AC to DC and vice versa. Solar is inherently DC, but by having the panels generate power as AC you already have a major loss. Smart thing to do would be to install DC outlets in homes to avoid wasting energy for devices that need them, like USB-C. But if the panels are generating AC then you're going DC->AC->DC and you lose so much energy. Another problem is that so many solar installations have no battery, and instead of saving that energy for night use, it's thrown back into the grid to make local power suppliers happy. Without a battery you can't use your solar power when the grid fails because apparently something like a relay isn't used to prevent feeding power back into the grid when the grid fails. A very cheap and effective relay.

You probably can't power an entire home on solar, but you can get really close. The rest of your energy needs can be done with wind power, hydro, and batteries. It doesn't need to always be a lithium battery, it can be other kinds of batteries. You always hear people talk about how we need nuclear power, but those are corporations who just want to build very expensive disasters waiting to happen. Fusion is just more promise that in the future we'll replace your cheap but polluting coal or natural gas power with expensive but clean nuclear or fusion power. Fusion power isn't realistic but it sure sounds good for marketing.
ped-hydro-works-credit-energyaustralia_100696797_m.jpg

 
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Timeframe of the problem. Take a milisecond pulse, stretch and shape it over 1/120th of a second to make a half-sine. Else repeat often enough to pulse frequency modulate a half-sine. Not about storing for days...
 
The rest of your energy needs can be done with wind power, hydro, and batteries. You probably can't power an entire home on solar...
No, you can't. Not cost effectively. You said it yourself. Conventional options are way more cost effective and the best solution until we have fusion. Just look at Germany's power bills now to see how well the above technologies are working (with the exception of hydro, which is cost effective and reliable). Destroying the economy by wasting resources on inefficient technologies only slows us down from developing better technologies like fusion.

We are not going to be able to explore the depths of the universe on solar and wind. People need to wake up to reality.
 
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Currently nobody has produced any electricity from fusion. Zero, None, Zip. Most of the fusion is just creating more heat which is hard to extract because it's so hot it could literally melt the walls of the reactor the moment it touches it. Even going by the heat, they barely produce more energy than they put into the system, but as we all know when you convert energy from one form to another you inevitably loose energy in the process, which probably means no electrical energy will be produced.

Pollution, which is the driving force to go fusion. Realistically natural gas is cheaper now to produce electricity.

Fusion will be expensive if IF we ever get it working. This isn't Back to the Future where we can take trash and put it in a Mr. Fusion to generate 1.21 gigawatts of electricity. This currently needs special expensive sources of fuel just to show they accomplished nothing.

This is less scientific method and more profiteering. Lots of people in science will make promises that can't be realistically achieved because research money is really good. Nuclear fusion is possible in theory but the amount of energy required to maintain the reaction is drastically higher than the amount of energy produced by the reaction. Even still can you make a machine that extracts that energy? The way we do fusion is by making it hot, like really hot. So hot that nothing can realistically contain it, which is why magnets are used. So how do you extract energy from the reaction that won't destroy equipment and shut down the reaction? You can't. Even still, so far only a little extra energy has been produced compared to what's put in, and what's put in is generally electricity.

We're no closer than we were 20 years ago. We can put that research money into extracting energy from that nuclear fusion reactor in the sky, but the neighbors don't want to see giant fan blades or solar panels on their roofs because property value. Also batteries but we have actual working solutions to all these problems.

Are we really no closer? 20 years ago we weren't even close to having raw energy output equal raw energy input. Now we have achieved raw output equalling raw input, so claiming no progress has been made is disingenious at best. Yes, there is a long way to go before total usable energy harvested exceeds total system energy input, but that doesn't mean research should stop.

I'm not saying we shouldn't because it's inefficient but that whatever extra they produced will still be a negative result because you still need to convert to electricity. These feel good stories are all about the newtons of energy in the system, but the goal is to make electricity and they haven't gotten to that point. They made a bunch of heat and then compare that to the energy put in and claim a positive gain. It's the same as someone who goes by crank horsepower in a engine when you really should be going by the wheel horsepower of the engine. The sad truth is if they actually tried to generate electricity it would be a very pathetic amount compared to what they put in.


This is the main driving force behind fusion. Never mind that we could solve most of the worlds electricity demands with solar, wind turbines, hydro power, and batteries without much of any needs from a giant power making building. Getting solar in your home is so stupid right now, it hurts my head thinking about it. For one, a lot of solar panels generate AC straight from the panel itself. Remember what I said about converting energy from one type to another will result in some loss? This goes for AC to DC and vice versa. Solar is inherently DC, but by having the panels generate power as AC you already have a major loss. Smart thing to do would be to install DC outlets in homes to avoid wasting energy for devices that need them, like USB-C. But if the panels are generating AC then you're going DC->AC->DC and you lose so much energy. Another problem is that so many solar installations have no battery, and instead of saving that energy for night use, it's thrown back into the grid to make local power suppliers happy. Without a battery you can't use your solar power when the grid fails because apparently something like a relay isn't used to prevent feeding power back into the grid when the grid fails. A very cheap and effective relay.

You probably can't power an entire home on solar, but you can get really close. The rest of your energy needs can be done with wind power, hydro, and batteries. It doesn't need to always be a lithium battery, it can be other kinds of batteries. You always hear people talk about how we need nuclear power, but those are corporations who just want to build very expensive disasters waiting to happen. Fusion is just more promise that in the future we'll replace your cheap but polluting coal or natural gas power with expensive but clean nuclear or fusion power. Fusion power isn't realistic but it sure sounds good for marketing.
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Depending on the climate and where the home is located, solar can absolutely power an entire home's energy needs. Using hybrid thermal photovoltaic panels greatly improves the efficiency of the system. The thermal part keeps the panels cool, allowing them to generate more electricity, while generating hot liquids that can be used for heating the house or for heating the hot water supply. If there is too much heat generated, it can be cooled by a radiator to the atmosphere, or for maximum efficiency, be combined with a geothermal system or insulated underground water tank to store heat for the winter months.

AC-DC conversion is about 90-95% efficient, and about the same in reverse. The cost of rewiring an entire home for DC would be very high. In addition, stepping up or down voltages would also cause efficiency loss, though a bit less as DC-DC converters can be 95-98% efficient. Running 12v DC throughout an entire house would be impractical due to the size of cables that would be needed, so you'll still be getting efficiency losses going from whatever DC voltage the panels output to the DC voltage the device needs.

Home battery technology is not ready for the mass market yet. There's been so much focus on lithium-ion batteries and its derivatives that alternatives have been neglected for far too long. Home batteries don't need maximum instantaneous power, energy/mass, or energy/volume. They need to be safe and last a long time, which is why I've been really interested in flow battery technology. Companies have only just started scaling up flow batteries for commercialization, so I'm waiting to see how that trickles down to the home market.

Water storage as a battery has its own host of problems, even more so if you're using seawater. Coastal areas, if they're not extremely hard to access, are generally prime real estate. Lots of land is needed, and flooding land that previously wasn't flooded comes with its own set of ecological impacts.

It's ironic you would end your post with the recent molten salt battery discovery. It is literally the exact same thing fusion research is doing. It's an experiment in a lab that has shown promise, now they're trying to get investors to fund research and development for commercialization. There are so many promising discoveries in the lab that just doesn't work as well, if at all, when scaled up.
 
Fusing helium-3 has long been known to produce directly harvestable electricity (about 70% of the energy generated if I recall correctly). The problem with helium-3 is that it is extremely rare on earth. The only reliable sources of helium-3 are fusion of hydrogen into tritium, and letting it decay to helium-3, sticking lithium into fission reactors and splitting it into tritium, or mining it from the moon. Tritium is also a byproduct of normal fission but in very low quantities. All natural sources on earth are so rare that extracting it would consume more power than it could produce.

Helium-3 reactors are nice but have the huge problem of fuel source to solve. Maybe they'll be viable on planes due to lower cooling requirements and more power produced directly as electricity. I don't see them replacing the need to develop standard hydrogen fusion reactors.

Edit to add additional sources of tritium.
Tritium is also epically unsafe
 
Fusion will never be a part of the electrical grid because:

1. As discussed, it's been very difficult to get more energy out than it takes to get to the fusion reaction, and even more difficult to capture that energy as electricity.

2. The funding sources that would have to be involved don't want cheap, abundant, nonpolluting energy to be available.

On your second point, they don't want it "to be available" is the key detail here. Having had a bit of an inside view, energy companies are throwing everything right now at figuring out how to create and store energy cheaper, but they want to be able to control it and sell it back to consumers at a premium. They're investing so much now, since they know its a race: as soon as a Shell, BP, Exxon etc. is able to generate energy more efficiently, they'll still sell it back to us at 20x -- and they know once one has the advantage, that company will be in a sweet spot/controlling position.
 
Tritium is also epically unsafe
Tritium is extremely safe. It's a very low level beta emitting isotope. Beta radiation is very easily shielded completely. Even small uptakes by workers isn't much of a hazard and happens regularly in the nuclear industry - especially with any heavy water reactor. We can deal with that pretty easily, plastic suits and such when it gets nasty. We've been doing that for over 50 years.

It still has very similar properties to hydrogen, so sure it's explosive if not handled properly. We figured out how to handle hydrogen many years ago so I don't see how that would be a problem.

Only other option is if it's used in a thermonuclear weapon....which is a completely different design and physics so that's out too.

How exactly is this unsafe?
 
Being "cost effective" isn't the show stopper that it used to be. Companies are willing to pay extra for green energy because that is what they think thier customers want.
 
2. The funding sources that would have to be involved don't want cheap, abundant, nonpolluting energy to be available.
I feel obviously that was never true (energy consumer are a much bigger group of people than energy producer), imagine China CCP, would they not want cheap, abundant, nonpolluting energy ? And the funding source ?
Never mind that we could solve most of the worlds electricity demands with solar, wind turbines, hydro power, and batteries without much of any needs from a giant power making building.
I feel that a bit of a diversion-semantic tricks, the question is not world's electricity demands it is world energy demands, place that solve more or their electricity demands with those (like Quebec), still need more than 50% of their energy from fossil fuel and solve most of the world energy demands via solars-wind-hydro-battery is far from being obvious, Germany last 20 years experiment seem to say that it is not at all the case with current technology.
 
Are we really no closer? 20 years ago we weren't even close to having raw energy output equal raw energy input. Now we have achieved raw output equalling raw input, so claiming no progress has been made is disingenious at best. Yes, there is a long way to go before total usable energy harvested exceeds total system energy input, but that doesn't mean research should stop.

The progress is nice, but it's still just a tiny chunk of the way needed to get to where we want to be. I do agree that the research shouldn't stop, since new discoveries can generate benefits in other areas of research, too.

I'm simply saying that we need to temper the exuberance and happiness at this "milestone," since it's basically the same thing as passing mile marker #50 on a journey around the world. You've already pointed out one of the bigger obstacles in your post.

Current technologies aren't going to get it done, and until someone comes out with something truly revolutionary, the best options are the ones we already have in place (coal, natural gas, nuclear fission, etc).

I see the same kind of overly optimistic outlooks on gene therapy. As a biochemist, I will gladly admit that gene therapy has a huge amount of promise, but as a realist, I also realize that I'm not going to see those benefits in my lifetime. Maybe my 3 year old daughter might see those benefits when she's a senior citizen, though.
 
The progress is nice, but it's still just a tiny chunk of the way needed to get to where we want to be. I do agree that the research shouldn't stop, since new discoveries can generate benefits in other areas of research, too.

I'm simply saying that we need to temper the exuberance and happiness at this "milestone," since it's basically the same thing as passing mile marker #50 on a journey around the world. You've already pointed out one of the bigger obstacles in your post.

Current technologies aren't going to get it done, and until someone comes out with something truly revolutionary, the best options are the ones we already have in place (coal, natural gas, nuclear fission, etc).

I see the same kind of overly optimistic outlooks on gene therapy. As a biochemist, I will gladly admit that gene therapy has a huge amount of promise, but as a realist, I also realize that I'm not going to see those benefits in my lifetime. Maybe my 3 year old daughter might see those benefits when she's a senior citizen, though.

As I pointed out above, the biggest problem with this kind of reactor is the issue of fuel. It's cool but will only make sense in a situation where the reactor has to generate power in the smallest footprint possible because of the scarcity of fuel.

Also I agree about the very long timeline. Major hurdles to overcome just at the experimental stage, let alone getting it to a point where it's commercially ready.

I disagree that the options already in place are the best ones though, especially coal. Battery projects should be greatly expanded to lower the need for baseline power plants, as excess energy is usually just run into the ground.
 
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